Slartibartfast has an interesting piece on the history of the technology of navigation. Compass/log/astrolabe/sextant/clock and so on.
One little part leapt out at me, where he talks about Newton and ellipses.
As I’m told by those who understand maths, one of the major points Newton made was that planets do not move in circles, they move in ellipses. An ellipse does not have a ” centre ” it has two focal points, or if I can get my grammar right, two foci. And in the case of a planet, the Sun will be at one of those two foci.
So when the Bank of England decided to put Newton on the pound note ( before inflation made such things into coins : does that mean that inflation is the cause of the transmutation of elements ? Isaac would have been interested.) They drew a nice little picture with the old alchemist himself, a planetary orbit, along with the requisite foci.
And then put the sun in the ” centre “.
I just have to wonder, is the obvious abscence of mathematicians from those halls where the money is both counted and issued something to do with the problems we’ve had in the past over how the money is counted and issued ? And how much ?
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